March 26, 2011

Eggless Pumpkin Apricot Cake

Initially I had planned to use the apricot received as part of the Arusuvai Friendship Chain in a baking recipe. And I bookmarked few recipes too. I tried a cake using the recipe from Allrecipes. The original recipe was for two cakes. Since I wanted to bake a single cake, I halved the ingredients. I replaced eggs with flaxseed meal and used whole wheat flour (atta) in place of all purpose flour(maida). Except for these two changes, I have followed the original recipe.

I chose this recipe since I have never baked with pumpkin puree. Its just mixing the wet and dry ingredients and no creaming/whisking required here. Actually you can do all the mixing in one bowl as mentioned in the original recipe. Since I am used to doing it separately and also wanted to be sure that the wet ingredients are combined well for even distribution.

Ingredients

Dried apricots -8 nos 1/4 cup puree

Pumpkin puree - 1 cup

Whole wheat flour - 2cups

Baking powder - 1 tspn

Baking soda - 1/2 tspn

Ground cinnamon - 1 tspn

Salt -1/4 tspn

Caster sugar - 1 cup (I powdered granulated sugar not very fine)

Flax seed meal - 1 tblspn mixed in 4 tblspn of water

Vegetable oil - 1/4 cup

Method

Prepare the apricot puree

Soak the apricots in boiling water for half an hour. Water should be enough to cover the apricots. Puree the apricots in a mixer grinder. Add some water while grinding. The puree should measure 1/4 cup. You can use the soaked water to make it to 1/4 cup.

Prepare the pumpkin puree

Take 250 gm of pumpkin. Peel and deseed the pumpkin and then chop it into cubes. Steam cook in the pressure cooker or microwave until it is tender. Puree the pumpkin to get 1 cup of puree.

To bake

Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, salt and sugar in a bowl. In another bowl, add flax seeds mixed in water, apricot and pumpkin purees. Make a well in the centre of the fry ingredients. Add the wet ingredients and mix until they are just combined.

The batter consistency is similar to that of muffins. At first, I had mixed flax seed meal in 3 tablespoon of water. But I found the batter to be very thick and added. another tablespoon of water to get muffin batter consistency.

Bake in a greased and dusted tin at 180 C for 45 minutes or until the skewer inserted comes out clean

The cake was moist and airy. The cake is just sweet enough for my palate. If you prefer it be very sweet, then increase the sugar by 1/4 cup more. After tasting, I felt addition of a handful of nuts/tutti fruity/chocolate chips will be better to make it more than just a plain cake. Else a butter cream frosting would have complemented the cake well but decided not to go for it since I did not want to add more calories.